AT&T getting Android in form of HTC Lancaster

If you hadn’t noticed, it was the weekend of leaked slides at Engadget. Of the many slides the site posted, one was the HTC Lancaster, a device that looks like the love-child of a G1 and a Magic.

The coolest part of the leak is that it appears that this device will feature an HTC developed user interface instead of the plain vanilla Android UI found on the G1. Perhaps it will be the same “Rosie” UI that is floating around on the leaked HTC Hero ROMs.

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The original targeted launch date was August 3rd, but it appears that this might have been pushed back by the decision to use the new user interface.

Well, the original Kogan Agora was killed right before it went to production supposedly because its QVGA resolution display was inadequate for running the various Android apps available. You can read more about that phone here.

However, the aspect ratio of the display in this rendered image is, indeed, close to that of 240×320, and General Mobile’s DSTL1 sports only a marginally better 240×400 pixel display and the company claims it is sufficient for “most apps it has tested”.

I also have to admit that the aspect ratio for the half VGA display used on the Magic wouldn’t fit here, though a full VGA display would work.

But in the end, I just don’t see many QVGA resolution capacitive touchscreen displays, and I don’t think HTC would go with such a dead common display when it uses higher res on other devices with similar screen sizes – unless, of course, it is planning a resistive display here.

The same reasoning goes for the camera, though I think there is a much better chance that the camera will lack autofocus than it will have a QVGA display.

In the end this could just be a real value play handset, meant to come in at a very low price point. That wouldn’t be all bad, but I’m certainly pulling for better specs.